


Tendresse

by ecrivant



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heartache, M/M, Marley Arc (Shingeki no Kyojin), Melancholy, No Spoilers, One Shot, Other, Quiet, Reader-Insert, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28064259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecrivant/pseuds/ecrivant
Summary: In the woods, away from the world, you and Reiner take a moment to yourselves to just exist; a tender respite in the eye of the storm.  Emotional catharsis, a consideration of what could have been.
Relationships: Reiner Braun/Reader, Reiner Braun/You
Comments: 16
Kudos: 109





	Tendresse

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during the Marley arc, right after Reiner’s confession at the campfire, but there are no spoilers. Reader is gender neutral.

He sat alone, away from their temporary settlement, swallowed by trees and the oppressive nocturne which had long since appropriated the respite of the campfire in which the group dined. Yards away, Warriors and the Paradisians together in repose—both groups, two-sided coins, unaware that their flipside lay in each other’s own counterpart. He listened to their stirring bodies—their restlessness, indistinguishable. The wind’s steady respiration rustled the trees, and his eyes, sensitive from the prolonged darkness, made out moving branches against the moonlit sky. The relentless ether, pitch-dark but not void, hung precariously above the canopy, threatening to crush anything beneath it if its suspension happened to fail. Perhaps he wished for such a swift end, one where everyone was stripped of their agency and had no choice but to submit and relinquish their will. Only if it were that simple.

“Reiner?”

The sounds of footfalls against the detritus. Each step, a tightening of the vise. You extended a hand to touch his shoulder, trembling digits meeting tense muscles. His name, again, left your lips in a whisper. He wouldn’t turn to look at you. Or couldn’t. 

His eyes stayed on the ground as you collapsed beside him, legs giving into exhaustion. Despite everything, your auras still emitted a warmth the two of you could quietly share. Neither spoke. 

An image materialized: one of you and Reiner, blithely inebriated after sneaking into the superiors’ liqueur stash, seated atop a once-virescent knoll, now bathed in the pitch of night. Another moment shared in silence from years before. You frowned at your memory’s disquieting betrayal. 

“I don’t know how much more I can apologize.”

“Please, don’t.” He finally turned to look at you. The contours of your profile, tenebrous and barely there, the same he impressed upon himself years ago and returned to during all the sleepless nights in Marley, were still intoxicating. Your brow, furrowed in frustrated thought.

You continued, eyes facing forward, “I’m tired of hating you. I just want a moment without brooding.”

Reiner nodded. He, more than anyone, wished for a moment free of the merciless despondency.

The groundcover rustled as you moved to sit in front of him. Your eyes, pupils blown wide, bore into his. He felt read by you, self-conscious under your gaze, but refused to look away. Your hand came to rest against his cheek, a touch that held all your unvoiced tenderness and compassion and betrayed your ocular intensity. He severed your eye contact to close his eyes and feel—feel the warmth of your palm burning onto his frigid skin, feel the memories of your timid touch. A quivering whisper, cracked:

“It’ll all be over soon, Reiner. Then we can rest.”

Your words hung in the air, but you allowed the moment to move around you, through you, eventually taking your words with it. 

Different circumstances, and he would have married you. He regretted the thought. 

“Why do you care so much about me?” he asked quietly, moving beneath your touch. 

Your sternum imploded, winding you. The prickle of tears bloomed in your sinuses, spilling over before you could compose yourself. 

His eyes opened, half-lidded, as your hand pulled away from his face. He saw your lips parted in shock, quivering.

“Why do I care?” A ragged query, laced with tears. 

Reiner looked at you with clouded eyes, and you pulled him into your arms, desperate. You sobbed into his shoulder, and you cried for him. He sat unmoving before he eventually held you back, wrapping his arms around your form. He felt grateful you couldn’t see his tears but then wondered why—in cathartic surrender, he allowed a sob to reverberate through his body, and then another, and soon his form gave way to violent palpitations that caused you to grip onto him tighter. He wished, consumed by a twisted machoism, for this to last forever—to be held by you, flayed open and made raw, basking in your shared heartache and effusions. This was pain he could endure eternally.

He was pulled back to the present as you murmured something, quiet ululations swallowed by your gasping breaths and tears: I love you, said over and over again like an ephemeral mantra rather than a confession. Words that Reiner had unrelentingly fought against, suppressed; words that threatened to self-articulate and spill forth in the quiet interstices you shared, late at night, tucked away from the soldiers’ barracks; in the moments walking to and from the dining room at HQ; in the moments where you would laugh and his chest would swell and his face would flush and he would want nothing more than to take you into his arms and hold you; in the moments of silence pervaded by things unsaid. 

Now, in this moment, he loathed himself for not saying anything, for not being the first to say it. To have exacerbated the torment of his betrayal in exchange for a few blissful moments of ignorance where you loved blindly and unabashedly—would it have been worth it? Cruelly, selfishly, he wished he had done it. He would have taken those moments to the grave. 

Your lips, still engaged in a distraught glossolalia, ghosted along his neck, voltaic, jolting him out of his ruminative daze. He pulled away from you.

“Can I kiss you?”

His shaky whisper, boyish and innocent, silenced you. You were faced with a younger Reiner—the subtly shy cadet who once carefully asked to hold your hand as he snuck you away from the grounds—and felt your heart seize. Why couldn’t it always have been this way?

Your noses bumped as you leaned in. The kiss was callow, both of you unsure of how to move against the other. Reiner’s hands still rested on your shoulders and yours remained in your lap. Awkwardly immobile. He pulled away, and you were both smiling, flushed, teenage. Even in the dark, his worry lines seemingly dissipated; you wish you had appreciated his youthful features years ago. 

He closed his eyes again, surrendering to bliss as your soft fingers traced the contours of his face. Up and down the bridge of his nose, along his lips, over his eyelashes; your lips shadowed your touch, softly kissing the tip of his nose, the side of his mouth, his eyes, one by one. Delicacy that would never see the waking hours, instead confined to private moments in the obscurity of night—you both silently and implicitly acknowledged there was no room for tenderness in a world so inhospitable. 

“We would be married,” he began. Realizing what he was doing, your heart clenched, eyes begging him to stop—but Reiner wanted to indulge. Emotional machoism. 

“And we would have a home by the sea.” His resolve fractured—his voice began to shake. 

“Reiner, please—"

“We could grow old together, and,” he paused, swallowing the tremor in his words, “we could even have a kid or two, if you wanted.”

You couldn’t look at him. To speak of dreams was linguistic torture, mental contamination: the vocalization and deception of an aching beauty, a deceptive chimera. 

“I would love you until there was nothing left.”

He grasped your digits, begging you to imagine it with him. Your eyes shut. The rhythm of undulating tides and the crash of waves, the scent of saline breeze. Reiner on the beach, his fair hair full of sand and bright against the unbroken azure of the sky and the sea. The warmth of the sun against your complexion, caressed. 

The cruelty of reverie. 

You sat together, awake, until the dim morning light edged over the horizon. The blue dawn, cool and encroaching, enveloped the woods in an ethereal glow. Fog hung low, and as the blue gave way to golden light, rays cut through the haze and the trees, collecting around you. Reiner’s creased features returned, but his gaze remained soft. You looked at him, intense as always, and saw him plead. You respired slowly, focused on your beating heart, and apologized. Neither of you knew exactly why. 

The others began to rise. The coals of last night’s fire were grey ash, crushed and scattered underfoot. You and Reiner blinked tears out of your eyes, sharing one last look, before joining the rest of the group.

**Author's Note:**

> wow! reiner simps rise up! thank you so much for reading this piece! i legitimately think reiner has some of the most compelling character development ever + he’s hot, so who better to write something for? i haven’t written anything, much less fanfiction, in a very long while, so things are probably real rusty. feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome but also… please be nice to me. i have a very weak emotional constitution. i honestly think i fell back into writing because aot s4 is getting to me and i need a place to process shit. hope you enjoy a live view of my mental degradation.


End file.
